2024 Council Candidate Town Hall

Opening Statement

Hi everyone, thank you all so much for attending. My name is Benjamin Rosenblum and I’m a writer for nonfiction television and film, including reality TV, docuseries, and documentaries. Since 2014, I’ve been assisting the Guild as they organize the nonfiction genre. 

The WGA East has faced some difficulties in their nonfiction organizing, much of which weren’t very clear to me at first as a regular Guild member. This led me to run for Council in 2021 to learn how and why our union operates in the way that it does. Thankfully, I was elected, and I finished serving my term on Council at the end of last year’s inspiring and hard-fought strike. 

My experience in leadership was very revelatory, not only showing why the organizing I’ve been taking part in has had so much difficulty, but why our union’s bargaining power faces such an uphill battle against the power of the ever-growing corporations. 

I delve into these issues more deeply in my candidate statements from this year and last year, and I encourage you to read them, but in short, what I found in leadership is that the biggest obstacle we face right now is how our union’s governance operates—it is top-down with very limited accountability and transparency. This creates a situation where leadership becomes removed from the concerns of our rank-and-file members, and members themselves are left in the dark.

How can members hold leadership accountable when they don’t know what happens at Council meetings, how leadership votes, and ultimately what decisions are made there? How can members participate in our union and hope to build power for the future if they don’t know what’s possible or what may be holding them back? 

While our union does have a degree of power, we always have to ask ourselves, is it enough? At the moment, many genres of film and TV writers still aren’t fully covered under the MBA, which undermines our strength. And still, there’s a lack of debate and deliberation about strategy and decision-making, discourse that could help members see the bigger picture about how to bolster our union’s power to secure the MBA gains we all need and deserve. 

If our members could thoroughly discuss the immense bargaining power that the Guild would have with writers from all genres of tv and film striking together to attain essential MBA gains for everyone, that reciprocal solidarity would be empowering in itself.

I’m a proud Guild member, and that’s why bringing these critiques to light is important—so we can properly address them and grow as a union to face the challenges that lie ahead. 

Our union is tasked with challenging increasingly powerful corporations that are trying to unilaterally rewrite the terms of our livelihood in the film and television industry. Now, more than ever, we must ensure our union is powerful enough to take on this fight.

It’s become clear that our union must transform into a member-driven union—one that is democratic, with transparent and accountable leadership. This is the most effective way to build true reciprocal solidarity among all members, providing us with the collective power we'll need to succeed.

I'm running for Council again this year to help bring about these essential changes by empowering our rank-and-file members.

Your vote and support would mean such a great deal. But more importantly, I look forward to working together as we strengthen our union from the bottom up.